Posted on 09/26/2012 5:22:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Oval Office isn't the place to learn on the job. That was the line from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2008. In fairness, that's always the argument the more experienced candidate uses against the less experienced candidate (just ask Mitt Romney).
But Barack Obama seemed a special case, easily among the least experienced major-party nominees in U.S. history. A Pew poll in August 2008 found that the biggest concern voters had with Obama fell under the category of "personal abilities and experience." In a "change" year, Americans swallowed those concerns and voted for the change candidate.
Four years later, it's worth asking, "What has Obama learned?"
Several journalists have asked that exact question. And Obama's answers raise another question: Can Obama learn?
In July, CBS News' Charlie Rose asked Obama what the biggest mistake of his first term was. Obama replied it "was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right."
Getting the policy right is important, Obama continued, "but the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."
Then, last week, in an admirably tough interview on the Spanish-language network Univision, Obama was asked what his biggest failure was. His first impulse was to pander. "My biggest failure so far is we haven't gotten comprehensive immigration reform done," Obama said. "But it's not because for lack of trying or desire, and I'm confident we are going to accomplish that."
(Actually, it was at least a little "for a lack of trying or desire," given that Obama never pushed for the legislation, even when his party controlled Congress.)
Then Obama got contemplative. "The most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside, you can only change it from the outside," he said. "That's how I got elected, and that's how the big accomplishments like health care got done because we mobilized the American people to speak out."
Put simply: This is very strange stuff.
In the 2008 primaries, Obama and Clinton had an intense argument over the nature of the presidency. Clinton argued that real change came when skillful politicians moved the machinery of Washington toward progressive ends. The president was a "chief executive officer" who is "able to manage and run the bureaucracy," she explained.
No, no, replied Obama. The presidency "involves having a vision for where the country needs to go ... and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change."
So, after four years on the job, Obama has learned that he was right all along! How humble.
Except that's not the story of Obama's presidency. Contrary to popular myth, Obama has not rallied public opinion to his side on a single major domestic issue.
The idea that health care reform was an "outsider-driven" affair is especially otherworldly. Unpopular from the get-go, it passed with ugly horse trades and legislative bribes that helped spur an outsider movement to defeat it, i.e., the "tea parties."
His claim that he was too busy "getting the policy right" to tell the people a story is doubly creepy in its lack of self-awareness. All the reporting about Obama's first term suggests that he outsourced the heavy lifting on the stimulus, "Obamacare" and Wall Street reform to the Democratic leadership while he indulged his logorrheic platitudinousness. According to Bob Woodward's new book, even Nancy Pelosi hit mute on the speakerphone (which she's denied) during one of Obama's perorations, and she and Harry Reid went on with their meeting.
In his first year, Obama barely stopped talking to the American people, who unfortunately didn't always have a mute button handy. According to CBS's Mark Knoller, Obama gave 411 speeches or statements (52 addresses solely on health care reform), 42 news conferences, 158 interviews, 23 town hall meetings and 28 fundraisers.
And what did Obama learn from all of this? Nothing, nothing at all.
OOohh! ohhhh!!!! I KNOW THIS ONE!!
Nothing
The successful hustler knows himself first, then his mark.
If he's successful .. "I knew that"
If he fails, "I expected that"
Either way, he has everything planned and mapped out including his failures.
There's nothing more arrogant that a professional hustler.
Can you spell N.O.T.H.I.N.G. boys and girls?
He has learned that hip hop and celebrity culture is a way to keep his voters since issues mean nothing to them as long as he keeps giving them more “free” stuff.
That about half the population is stupid enough to vote a commie POS like him president? Not just once, but twice.
“If you don’t know anything, it’s hard to learn something else”.
1. He has learned where the great vacation spots are.
2. He has learned how to tame that nasty slice in his golf swing.
3. He has learned that a complicit press can cover up the most egregious past any "president" has ever had.
4. He has learned that half the population is nowhere near as stupid as he thought (hoped).
He has learned that at least half the country is clueless and gullible.
At this stage of the game, I’m more concerned about what the American people have learned since hiring Obama, and apparently it isn’t much. A nation dumb enough to hire this guy one time doesn’t inspire great expectations, but I had dared expect more than the dullard response we’ve seen thus far. None of this bodes well for the future of America or Democracy.
A better question: Is 0bama CAPABLE of learning? Given his ego and limited mental abilities, the resounding answer is NO!
Experts say that the maturity level of an alcoholic is set at the age they started drinking. Obama strikes me as someone who imbibed leftist ideology in his youth, and is stuck there. It is so tied up with his ego, that he cannot admit any fundamental flaws; when things don’t work, he seeks an explanation in the other categories within his ideology. Note that in his self-critique, Obama weaves between what he evidently sees as the only two models for governance: Menshevism (”change comes from Revolutionary masses”) and Bolshevism/Stalinism (”change comes from leaders working the system from inside”). He seems incapable of looking for answers outside his bubble.
But I think his ideology is weighted towards “critique” and therefore on negatives derived from comparison with perfection, not real aternatives (he is anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-white, etc.). Obama has no clear “vision” of how he wants things to be (that could be analyzed and shown to be unworkable) — he just wants to pull down what is. In many areas, his lack of focus, skills, and a work ethic is a blessing.
The only critque of your analysis is your assertion that the jug-eared ignorant moron lacks a “clear vision”; while I agree that he has no idea how things should be or how to reorder society, as a sociopathic narcissist I believe he envisions himself as the sole ruler of whatever results from the mayhem and chaos he enabled.
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